An artist from a small Pacific island who has found unexpected resonances with her work in the mountains, post-industrial landscapes and people of Wales has won the Artes Mundi prize, one of the UK’s most important contemporary arts awards.
Taloi Havini, who is from Buka Island in Bougainville, picked up the £40,000 prize at a ceremony in Cardiff, the home of the biennial exhibition and prize on Thursday evening.
Havini admitted that before becoming one of the seven artists nominated for the prize, which is in its 10th iteration, she knew very little about Wales. “I had no idea about it. I had certainly never been to Wales,” she said.
But it has turned out there was common ground between her work and the two places her pieces are being shown – Mostyn in Llandudno, north Wales, and Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff.
Mostyn is hosting her immersive video installation, Habitat, which explores the devastation caused by Australia’s exploitation of the copper reserves in Bougainville.
Havini said after visiting the coastal town of Llandudno, she ventured inland to view the impact slate mining had had on north Wales on the landscape and local people.
“I saw the importance of the mountains, the waterways. I was taken to the slate museum and saw how those communities depended on mining – and then it ended,” she said. “In strange ways there were similarities to Bougainville. It’s why I do what I do, speak to the human experience.”
Havini talked to the Guardian before the prize-giving in front of another of her works, Hyena (day and night), which dominates the wall of the bustling cafe at Chapter Arts Centre. It consists of a 1970s slide blown up to giant proportions showing women from her father’s family collecting shells from a reef and on top of it three light boxes featuring images of bright coral.
She was tired after a trying journey from the Pacific involving five flights and two train trips but was delighted to see the work again in a communal space where people were going about their business – parents looking after babies, cinema fans waiting before a film, people having coffee and cakes. It is about themes such as community and cycles of life so she felt the setting was appropriate.
For the first time this year, the Artes Mundi showed the work across five venues in four towns and cities almost the length and breadth of Wales. The Guardian art writer Jonathan Jones said the exhibition “plunges you into a polyglot assembly of artists from all over the world dealing with problems and projects” – and pointed out that spreading it across the country meant you would have to take a week off to see it all.
Nigel Prince, the director of Artes Mundi, said taking the exhibition across the country had proved popular with nearly 100,000 people seeing the work.
He said there had been lovely moments of unexpected serendipity. For example, a piece by the Colombian artist Carolina Caycedo featuring a salmon narrator was being shown at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown, mid-Wales, which turned out to be close to UK salmon spawning grounds.
When she was in Llandudno, Havini was introduced to a woman in north Wales, Bethan Mair Williams, whose parents had taught in Papua New Guinea for half a century and happened to know members of the artist’s family. Williams is doing guided tours of Havini’s work at Mostyn.
Havini said she had not expected to win the prize and found it humbling. “I’m interested in conversation and dialogue. To be even nominated was amazing. Artists don’t do it for the money, they do it for other things but it enables an artist to keep going.
“I think it’s going to mean a lot for Bougainville. It means a lot to me that my people’s Indigenous ancestral stories have had a presence in Cardiff and Llandudno.”
The exhibition runs until 25 February 2024.
